We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.

O Black and unknown bards of long ago, How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?

Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies; Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

A people may become great through many means, but there is only one measure by which its greatness is recognized and acknowledged. The final measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the literature and art they have produced.... No people that has produced great literature and art has ever been looked upon by the world as distinctly inferior.

I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.

The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over his social recognition.

There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.